I don't think this is very far fetched at all, since they outright call they're transaction fee "gas money". Wondering what everyone thinks on this.

It seems clear that Ethereum (and it's derivatives, Expanse, Ubiq, ETC, etc...) are positioning themselves as the blockchain equivalents of the oil/fuel economy of today for the future tokenized economy they hope to develop. Ethereum was never really intended to be an asset in itself, and their desire to keep ASICs out of the game for them to have it more equitably distributed in mining/staking all appear to add credence to that.

I could see 5-10 years from now have ERC20 tokens as burgeoning economic vehicle for knowledge/wealth/work transfer with ethereum serving as the Exxon of them all, thus never removing it's necessity in the marketplace regardless of the token startups success or failure (as long as they don't all fail).

If that reasoning and long-term planning is valid, than I think it's safe to say that you'd be hard to find someone who made themselves poor buy buying into oil companies in the early 20th century.

How will it exceeds the price of bitcoin? Op said people become poor by investment into oil in the early 20th and this is fact as oil went to around $145 and now trading bellow $50. Bitcoin on the other hand which is behaving like gold went from cent and now trader above $1700 which is equivalent of how gold went up and remains up there.